


Retrospect

by Timeskipped



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Junpei-centric, Kidnapping, Memory Loss, Multiple Timelines, VLR timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 13:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timeskipped/pseuds/Timeskipped
Summary: In January 2029, with the Dcom experiment completely destroyed and his unconscious body found in the rubble, Junpei goes on a search for missing memories and a missing girl.In January 2074, Junpei finds himself searching for both all over again.





	Retrospect

Junpei wakes up blearily to find himself in a hospital. It smells faintly like chemicals, but not unpleasantly so. He blinks a few times, tries to figure out what could’ve landed him here. The first thing that comes to him is the throbbing of a bruise on his head, like he’d slammed his head against the ground. It’s happened before in his job, and it’s unpleasant as fuck every time, but it’s never landed him in the hospital.

He pulls himself into a sitting position, and he can feel a bandage pull at his skin as he moves his arm.

What happened to him, exactly? Why is he here? His memory feels like a blank fog. He can vaguely think of Dcom, and of feeling afraid, but other than that… nothing. Was it him hitting his head that caused this? Unlikely.

He lifts his left arm from its place under the hospital’s blankets, but all that stares back at him is white bandages, wrapped tightly around his wrist. His heart rate picks up at the sight. It reminds him of bracelets unable to be forced off and of the Nonary Game from a year ago. The thought turns his stomach.

He stares at it until a nurse enters the room.

The next few hours are a blur, as people come in and out of his room. They explain things to him, but when asked what he knows, he shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he says, weakly. “I don’t remember anything at all.”

They exchange looks over his head. Junpei clenches his hands into fists, a wave of anger with no target washing over him. They had drawn his blood to test for anything in his bloodstream, after they found him unconscious and unable to wake up in the bunker where they found the other Dcom participants. They’d found both Soporil Beta and a memory loss drug he doesn’t recognize the name of inside him; together the drugs caused his inability to remember.

It always comes back to Soporil Beta, he thinks, trying to find somewhere to aim his fury. First, the drug was invented by Cradle Pharmaceuticals and money they got from it went to Akane and Santa, and now it’s forced him to forget what destroyed the Mars mission test.

“Who brought me here?” he asks one of the people who came to question him.

“Well, um,” the person seems unsure, scratching their forehead. “We were going to send a rescue team eventually, to check out the bomb shelter, but… you were brought over to our vehicles by a man who apparently went in early. We weren’t able to get his name, and his face was covered, but he was wearing the correct gear, so…” The person huffs. “Sounds like going outside of protocol to me, but what do I know?”

“Huh,” Junpei says, simply, and stares down at his lap, where his hands are folded beneath the hospital’s blankets. The bandages are still wrapped around his arm. He can barely feel them, but even the slight touch fills his mind.

He doesn’t ask them to take the bandages off, even though he can’t bear to look at them.

* * *

The last thing he remembers is this:

He had been trying to speak to Akane. That was his goal, wasn’t it, to have a conversation with her again? To find her after a whole year and two months after she left him was a miracle in itself, and now he could finally put his whirling thoughts into words that she could respond to.

(She left _them,_ really, because Seven still looks pensive when he brings her up, and the Field siblings would ask how far he’d gotten, before they stopped calling a few days before he left for Dcom, and Lotus—no, Hazuki—she sighs wearily when he says Akane’s name, but still wishes him tentative luck. None of them understand it in the same way Junpei does, but they were left behind too.)

They had been at Dcom since the 26th, and Junpei had tried to talk to her, but every time, she’d end up brushing away his questions. She never tried to talk to him first, so it was always him who had to begin the small, almost nonexistent conversations. He sighed heavily, certain that she wouldn’t talk, again. His suspicion of her curled unpleasantly in his chest, but he had to talk to her.

He _had_ to.

He just… couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him again. Seeing her there in Dcom, at how she was glancing at him but looking away with a frown, was different from the end of the Nonary Game, but at the same time, it felt like it was choking him in an almost identical way.

When he approached Akane’s room, he was stopped by Phi. He eyed her, knowing that she and Akane talked to Sigma and each other in secret.

“Tenmyouji,” she started, and Junpei blinked at her. He didn’t realize that she would be so formal with him, especially in America, where everyone called him by his first name. “You’re trying to talk to Akane, right?”

“That’s right,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Why does it matter?”

Phi stood there, one hand on his arm, and stared at him. Her blue eyes bore into him; her warning, as subtle as it was on her face, was obvious to Junpei. “I won’t stop you, but I will say that she probably won’t listen.” Phi sighed. “You’ve tried talking to her already, right? Well, it’s going to be the same thing until Dcom is over.”

Junpei narrowed his eyes at her. “Why’s that?”

“It’s a bit complicated, but it’s basically what Sigma’s been saying. We’re all working towards something, and we can’t focus on other things until we're done,” Phi shoved her hands in her pockets, taking her hand off his arm. “ That’s all I have to say. See you, Tenmyouji.”

Junpei stared at her as she walked away. “Wait,” he tried saying, but she didn’t even look back. Rude. He grit his teeth and turned back to the short hallway where Akane's personal room was.

What Sigma had said basically boiled down to the fact that something terrible would happen, that the world would end with six billion people dead, and that he’d come from the future to stop it and save humanity. It was insane, to say the least. Despite Sigma’s strange behavior, though, he and Phi seemed close, and both of them spent time with Akane. Junpei still couldn’t figure out a connection between them.

All he cared about was getting into Dcom so that he could see Akane again. He didn’t have time for whatever Sigma was going on about.

He knocked on Akane’s door. It opened slowly, and Junpei met Akane’s purple eyes.

“Junpei,” she started, mouth steadily neutral, not smiling like Junpei had hoped she would in the depths of his heart. “I can’t—”

Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she grabbed Junpei’s arm, but… but…

The memory ends there. Akane’s soft voice blurs into the hospital walls that Junpei finds himself between, and into the voices of the people who want to know what truly happened at the Dwelling for the Cohabitation of Mars.

* * *

He sits slumped over the table, and when he turns his left wrist into the muted light he can almost see the four indentations on his skin, pink and red where something punctured it before the rescue team found him. They’re mostly faded on his skin, but the pictures they’ve shown him from before send chills down his spine.

He presses play again, and the radio clip echoes through the room.

“This is Control. How’s it going over there? Bet you missed the sound of my voice, huh? Well, I gotta be honest, it’s getting pretty lonely over here, too…”

Junpei rests his cheek against the cool wood of the table. There’s only one light on in the dim room, and Junpei stares at it until the light imprints itself into his skull. The radio crackles near his ear, but he barely listens to this part. He could probably recite it from memory.

There are no answers for his situation. There’s nothing to give him a hint of what went on.

They say that they found his body, still breathing, by the rubble of an explosion, one that killed Mira, Eric, and Q. The only other people there had been Sigma, who was barely conscious after sustaining massive injuries, Phi, who was asleep but not drugged, and Diana, who had responded to Control and stayed with the other two.

Junpei hadn’t seen Sigma in the hospital, and he hadn’t had any reason to then. Phi had apparently forced them to quarantine her, struggling against anyone nearby who tried to help her. Diana… he didn’t know what had happened to Diana.

“This is—” Diana said into the Dcom radio, that December 31st, and in response the operator burst into quick speech. Junpei listens to it, searching the recording for answers he’ll never get.

“Oh, thank God! You really had me worried there. What happened?” The relief is palpable in his voice, and Junpei can envision the man smiling in his mind’s eye, unaware of what was to come.

There’s a long silence, the simulated time between Mars and Earth communication.

“Six of us are… dead,” Diana’s voice wavers.

The operator stutters, and Junpei doesn’t pay attention to it. He only pays attention to Diana’s fragile voice, the way her words form slowly, haltingly. It curls into his veins and squeezes around his heart, like the faintest memory of a soul crushing fear.

“Counting myself, there are only three left,” she says, and it echoes loud in Junpei’s ears. He suddenly feels heat behind his eyes. Why had she thought he was dead? What had caused her to believe that Akane and Carlos were dead, when they weren’t even there?

More than that, he thinks, there’s the faint traces of them being there behind the drugs blocking his memory. He thinks, somehow, that he remembers looking up at Akane, remembers her looking down at him. He can still feel her cold gaze on him, even now.

Why had she left him again? What had he done? Over a year of searching, and all he had to show for it was blood on his hands and vague remnants of Dcom.

“I…” Diana sounds so uncertain. “I guess you could say I killed them. No… no, that’s not quite right. Not just them. Not just these six...” She almost sounds like she’s going to break. “All of them… All six billion…”

Junpei pulls himself wearily up from his spot on the table. He feels, just like always, that he wants to shove the recording away from him, and he wants to crush it against the floor because it’s given him nothing.

He rubs the heels of his hands on his eyes, until stars swim in his vision and he can almost forget that Diana goes silent shortly after this, that she believes that she killed him, killed Akane, killed Carlos, Mira, Eric, and Q. Six billion people.

Her words lodge themself in Junpei’s brain, but he can’t quite make sense of them. He has to, though, it’s the only clue of what happened to them. He desperately has to figure it out, not for himself, but because it’s his only clue of what happened to Akane.

Sigma’s words drift through his brain. A time traveller who wanted to save the world. Six billion people dead.

He laughs, and the sound drowns out the recording. He’s going to die not knowing what happened. Akane is going to slip through his fingers every time he catches her again. It’s not fair! It’s never been fair!

He presses play again once his hysterical laughter dies off. One more time. Maybe it’ll finally give him something.

(It doesn’t.)

* * *

“Can I talk to Sigma?” he asks.

The receptionist at the hospital shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tenmyouji, but we can’t let anyone see him. He’s also refusing to let people—”

“Please,” he begs. “Please, I just need to ask him some questions. We knew each other during the Dcom experiment, and I need to know what happened.”

He can see her falter. She, like the news reporters, conspiracy bloggers, and people who just happened to read about it (but can’t place his name or face because he refused to let them put it down) want to understand what happened.

“I-I’m sorry, I can get someone to ask him again, but you’ll have to come back tomorrow even if he does say yes.”

He probably wouldn’t want to talk to him anyway, Junpei thinks. Still, he has to ask, and he can’t ask for Phi or Diana; the latter’s voice still makes him feel faintly sick, and the former is... unavailable. He tells the receptionist that that’s fine, and he leaves the hospital.

Sigma had been found by the rescue team with two missing arms and a missing eye. Junpei doesn’t want to think about what caused it.

He does anyways, in his empty apartment. He checks his phone, idly, and his heart sinks as he realizes that the only message he has is from Seven, and not any of the others. Lotus had contacted him some, but she was busy all the time, nowadays, and the Field siblings went missing for periods of time that they claimed was related to their jobs.

Still, something like this, where it’s been weeks, is unusual. He breathes out heavily, sets his phone to the side without answering Seven, and looks back down at the list of clues he’s compiled. They’re from articles, his own memories, the resources that Dcom staff gave him, and what he could get from the police as a detective, but he doesn’t know if it’s enough.

Three subjects dead (Mira, Eric, Q), two missing (Akane and Carlos), two unconscious but alive (Junpei and Phi), one with major injuries (Sigma), and one unharmed and investigated for murder (Diana). In addition to this, they found highly advanced robots that seemed human at first, traces of blood in a room set up for decontamination, and other strange technology.

The amount of people who are missing concerns Junpei. He bites his lip, rubbing idly at his wrist. His eyes scan all the notes for some hints as to where they could’ve all gone, but the only thing that gives him anything is one about Carlos.

Maria, apparently Carlos’ sister, had been taken from a hospital in a state outside Nevada, away from where Junpei bases his investigations. After Maria was out of the hospital’s care, reports of Carlos stopped showing up. The details are unimportant, but the facts are still there.

Along with his unconscious sister, Carlos had dropped off the map.

Junpei clicks his tongue. It doesn’t matter enough in his search for answers and for Akane, all things considered. Junpei’s already tried to find him, but just like the people actually doing the investigating, miles away, they can’t detect any trace of him. He keeps an eye out for any news, but without the investigation in his hands, that's all he can do.

All that matters for Junpei right now is that Carlos reappeared, because Carlos not being dead means that Akane can’t be either… right?

Junpei sighs. It’s too complicated. The bomb shelter is too strange, as are everyone’s actions. Not only was Sigma apparently supposed to stop this from happening, but Phi was almost certainly involved too. He desperately wants to ask them how, or why, or any number of questions, but his ability is limited if Sigma won’t talk to him.

After all, Phi went missing two days ago.

Junpei stares at his messy handwriting in the margins of the printed article about her disappearance, which happened in the middle of a move from questioning about the incident, and back to a hospital for further tests of the disease she’d supposedly contracted. Her name hadn’t been revealed in the article, but he knows it was her, knows it like his life depends on it.

Had Junpei last seen her on the day he tried to talk to Akane and his memory stopped working? Or had he seen her, in that exploded bomb shelter? Had Phi gone missing because the people who brought them there found her, or had she left by herself? Why, he wondered, had she forced herself away from anyone who tried to help?

He didn’t know her. All he could remember was the way her cold eyes bore into his, the way she stopped him before he spoke to Akane. She had been purposeful throughout their five days at Dcom, never revealing more about herself or what she was doing than Sigma already had.

He remembered the way she sarcastically joked around with Sigma, like they’d been together for a long time, but Junpei didn’t really know her. Five days means nothing. All he can do is wonder what her connection with Akane was, and wonder where she’d gone.

Maybe she’d gone to the same place Akane had. Maybe Carlos had, too.

The next day, no closer to the answer, he goes back to the hospital. He asks the receptionist, the same one, if he can see Sigma. She stares at him.

“What?” he asks. “Did he say no again? I just need to know, okay?”

“No, he,” the receptionist shakes her head, “he’s not here anymore. If you want more information,” she takes a shaky breath, “you should ask the police. They can tell you more than I can.”

Junpei is frozen in place. Sigma is… gone. He’s probably missing, too, just like Phi and Akane and Carlos, which means someone is probably going to make Junpei disappear, too. Maybe Diana, as well, if they can get to her. He shivers, turning away from the desk. He runs his hand through his hair forcefully, and lets out a wheezing breath that almost feels like a laugh as it escapes his lungs.

“God, what the hell is happening,” he mutters to himself.

He thinks of Clover, and how she had last called him on December 21st, told him she wouldn’t be around for a while. That was normal, but by now, two weeks into January, and she and Light were still gone? How could he be so stupid? Everything comes together into a terrifying reality, one that’s destroying everything Junpei knows.

It’s his fault for not seeing it sooner.

* * *

He talks to the police, and shows them that he’s a detective. He also tells them his relation to the Dcom experiment, and with a little bit of added coercion (because they’re not just going to let some random detective into their evidence without just a little of that, unfortunately) he’s able to learn more about what happened to Sigma.

The cameras are looping on the footage he gets shown. They don’t know what happened exactly, except for the non existent words of any nurses, doctors, or visitors who could’ve seen it, had things gone differently.

Junpei stares at the screens, watches the timer tick onwards even as the footage doesn’t change, and the empty hospital walls seem so threatening, knowing that they concealed the kidnapping (was it a kidnapping?) of a man with no arms.

The operator’s voice from the recording of the end of Dcom echoes ominously through Junpei’s mind: _What do you mean this isn’t live? …An old clip on repeat? Who would do that?_

It feels the same. It feels like all of Junpei’s leads, all of the people who could possibly understand what’s happening to him and what he’s going through right now, are vanishing before his eyes. Nobody else can figure it out, so he sure as hell can’t, not with his missing memories.

He locks himself in his apartment for a few days. He texts Seven saying that he'll be gone and gets a half-sarcastic, half-concerned reply, and he brushes off how worried Hazuki sounds with a joke. He texts Light and Clover, and gets zero response.

Instead of caring about all that, what matters is that he protects himself from being kidnapped, if it'll even happen again at all. He keeps his eyes on the news, searching for names he recognizes or events he can connect to Dcom.

His eyes keep glazing over. He needs to get more sleep, but he keeps waking up in the night; nothing new, but annoying nonetheless.

He calls Diana, eventually, when he's calmed down a bit. He doesn’t remember how or when he got her number, exactly, through the haze of his distracted hospital memories, but he did, and now he doesn’t want to put in the effort towards remembering.

He sits on his couch and drinks his beer, and he looks down at the picture of Akane he still keeps despite the fact that she left him again. He makes his decision to call almost idly.

Decisions feel like they hold so much weight, so much ability to change the world through the morphogenetic field, but he doesn’t pay attention to that as much as he does the tapping of his shaky fingers on his phone, as the cold bottle in his other hand. He brings the phone to rest between his shoulder and ear so that he can briefly rub his left wrist.

It still feels like there’s something there, but he knows there isn’t.

“...Hello?” Diana’s voice is nervous. Junpei cringes.

“Hey, Diana. It’s Junpei. Do you remember me?”

“Oh,” her voice goes from quiet to shocked. “Of course I do. I remember everyone who was at Dcom.” There’s a pause, and Junpei tries to gather his questions into words, tries to figure out how to warn her, but she speaks again before he can. “...I couldn’t believe it when they said you were alive. I thought I killed you. I really thought I killed you.”

“Well it’s a good thing you didn’t,” Junpei can’t stop his voice from taking on a lighthearted quality that he doesn’t truly believe in. “I think I prefer being alive to being dead.”

She laughs awkwardly, like she doesn’t mean it. He laughs like he’s dying.

“Why are you calling now?” she asks.

He takes a deep breath. “I need to know what happened at Dcom on December 31st,” he says. He looks down at the picture resting on his lap and, thinking of how Akane left that day, feels his heart grow heavy. He presses his lips together and tightens his grip on his drink, but the sinking feeling doesn’t go away.

Akane’s young eyes stare a bit off to one side of the frame, and her smile lights the whole thing up. Those June days had poured warm sunlight onto the two of them, and Junpei thinks he can still feel it on his skin now, just by looking at it.

Compared to that, Diana’s voice is cold. “I can’t tell you that,” she says quietly.

“What? Why not?” Junpei’s eyebrows furrow.

“Because… Sigma told me not to tell you. Because I’m going to cause the deaths of six billion people, but they still let me go free. So, I can’t tell you or anyone else what happened. ...Sigma was certain about that.” Junpei can hear a tight strain on her voice, a desperation that he feels hauntingly familiar with.

“I don’t get it,” Junpei says sharply, pushing forward despite Diana’s situation. “How can one person kill six billion? Why did Sigma tell you not to say anything? Where did he go, what do I have to do with this, and how the fuck do you expect me to just accept that you won’t tell me?!”

Diana takes a sharp, shaking breath. “Radical-6 is going to consume the planet. It got out from Dcom, but none of us understand it.”

“Okay, now you’re just avoiding my questions,” Junpei rolls his eyes. “Sigma knew, right? He was, what, a time traveller who came to save everyone? Seems like someone in that position would at least know what they were going up against.”

“No, he didn’t. He was trying to change things because he had no clue that I would let Radical-6 be released.” Her voice evens out a bit as she tries to get a hold of her emotions.

“Okay,” Junpei grips the phone tighter and his tone turns dry. “So, Sigma didn’t know enough to save us. Good thing we have someone to blame, then, even though he disappeared. _Great._”

Diana gasps. “How could you say something like that?”

Junpei ignores her. “And, hey, you haven’t exactly explained the whole thing with Radical-6, you know. Still kind of in the dark about what that really is.”

“You haven’t noticed?” Diana sounds as if she’s explaining something obvious, something even a child should know already. He leans back in his seat and takes a drink. “You really haven’t watched the news at all? More and more people are coming into hospitals with strange symptoms, and the suicide rate is skyrocketing. Are you really,” her words become tangled with rage, “so _self absorbed_ that you care more about figuring Dcom out?”

“Shut up!” Junpei growls. “I just want to know what happened! I have hours of time missing from my memory, and you really expect me to not care? Akane, Sigma, Phi, Carlos, they’re all missing! How am I supposed to know I’m not next? That _you’re_ not next?”

“Sigma and Phi are _safe._” Diana’s voice sounds desperate, but final. “Akane is, too. Don’t worry about them. And also, we’re not going to disappear.”

“Oh, no, no way, you can’t—”

Diana hangs up before he can finish. As the phone goes deathly silent, Junpei realizes with a sinking feeling in his chest that he’s truly alone.

Alone in his apartment, without anyone else, but also alone in other ways. People keep on disappearing, after all, whether by actually physically being missing, or by cutting him off. Diana had apparently contacted Sigma but… Were they really okay? Diana was just so cagey about it all that he can’t quite believe her.

He leans back again. He doesn’t understand.

She had let out this virus, this Radical-6. She obviously blamed herself, so why had she done it? What had led up to that moment?

* * *

He reads more articles, ones he hadn’t looked at before.

Diana had been released after investigation with the result that she’d been kidnapped and forced to kill. Sigma had also been involved, apparently, probably as someone else who could explain the kidnapping. Junpei, despite his lack of memories, feels, deep down, that having been kidnapped is something that seems obvious.

Of course he would’ve been kidnapped again. Of fucking course.

Then again, wasn’t the trial oddly fast and weirdly decisive? God, it was another mystery in his pile of endless questions. If questions were dollars, Junpei could buy a house with how many he had about Dcom.

Some of them had been answered by Diana, but not enough. Really, all he'd gotten was about what Radical-6 is.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t noticed the fact that more and more people were committing suicide. It wasn’t as though he was completely ignorant of everything going on, but as he continues to search, he finds more and more articles linking Dcom and the new disease. (It got a name, finally, only a day before he called Diana. Only a day.)

“Is Dcom the Index Case for a Raging Pandemic?” “Civilian Organization that Founded the Dwelling for the Cohabitation of Mars Currently Investigated for Radical-6 Conspiracy” “Could the Nevada Mars Mission Disaster be the Start of an Even Bigger Case?” “Scientists Baffled by Quick Spread of Radical-6 from Nevada.”

The light from his laptop hurts his eyes, but the articles just keep coming; the deaths keep happening.

By the time the eighteen annihilation reactors explode in April, Junpei has already given up hope of ever figuring out the truth about Dcom, even though he still wonders. Instead, he focuses on two things: his own life, and finding Akane.

He stares at her picture. The sweet, innocent girl smiles back at him, and he wishes that he was in a timeline where she wasn’t forced to play games with her life.

Time passes. Things change.

Junpei is alone, at the beginning of the end. For years he tries and succeeds at survival, but as always, questions from before the reactors exploded stick to him like glue.

Why did Sigma and Phi fail to save them? Why was Radical-6 released? How did things come to this? He still doesn’t know what, exactly, happened on December 31st, 2028, but he does know that even if he tries not to, he’ll continue thinking about that day for the rest of his life.

God, does he even have a life left?

He tries hard to abandon the questions. It doesn’t matter if he lost everything from that point, from that one day. He only keeps one question from that time, the same one he’s been protecting since he saved a young girl from death. He keeps it close to his chest, keeps her picture with him always.

If there’s anything left for him, the search for Akane is that. Her face is happy in the picture he keeps, but he can still faintly recall, in the depths of his mind, the way she looked at him at Dcom, the last trace of a memory before she left forever.

Why she was there and where she went afterwards, those are the things he will figure out, even after all this.

Time passes. Things change.

Quark gives him new life, even as he gets older. He keeps searching, but he finds that he still wants a life on Earth, because Quark is, and has been since Junpei found him, more important than a girl he hasn’t seen in so many years.

(But he would still drop everything else for Akane in a heartbeat. Nearly everything he’s built up, since Radical-6 started spreading, is disposable in the face of one woman. Despite all the time and space between them, Akane is the question and the answer.)

* * *

The shuttle to the moon is small, but not cramped. Junpei sits in one seat tiredly, but Quark, with all his endless enthusiasm for this trip, presses his face against the windows.

“Enjoying the view?” Junpei asks. Quark turns back to him with a grin.

“I can’t believe we’re going to space!” He laughs, and his smile softens out. It warms Junpei’s heart. “I know it’s for your important lady and everything, but thanks for taking me along too.”

“No problem, kid.” Junpei feels a smile pulling at his lips. “I wouldn’t go anywhere without you. If I left you behind…”

“I could handle it,” Quark asserts, “but I’d rather be here with you, Grandpa! Don’t worry, we’ll find the important lady and come back, and everything will be okay!” He turns back to the window. “Oh, oh, I think we’re going! Look!”

Junpei stands up to look through the window above Quark. It’s true; the shuttle is lifting from the ground slowly, gaining speed as it does. The floor underneath them shakes a bit, which Junpei can feel in his bones.

He puts his hand on Quark’s shoulder. “Sit down, Quark.”

But just as Quark does, white smoke begins to pour out of the bottom of the seats, and Tenmyouji realizes quickly what’s going on. Another Nonary Game. Another kidnapping.

Throwing himself over Quark, he grasps the boy’s shoulders tightly. “Quark, listen to me!” Quark’s eyes are wide, staring at him with an intensity that can only come from panic. “Don’t tell anyone why we came! Don’t reveal anything!” The smoke fills the shuttle more and more, and as Junpei breathes in, he can feel his head begin to get fuzzy.

“Grandpa…”

“I’m sorry… Quark…” Junpei presses his face into the top of Quark’s hat. He can feel Quark’s head lull, and soon afterwards, Junpei follows suit, falling heavily to the floor of the shuttle with Quark in his limp arms.

(The strange man who contacted Junpei had told him that Akane would be on the moon, and that he had prepared a shuttle for Junpei.

He knew there was a catch the moment he heard it, but he’d still stupidly agreed. He even ended up taking Quark along, despite how he’d been warned to not talk about why he came, under threat of both his and Quark’s lives. How had Junpei overlooked that they would kidnap them? The man’s mask showed nothing, but Junpei knew now that this was another Zero. Another deadly game.

Would Akane still be there, or was it all a lie…?)

* * *

When Phi appears in the second Nonary Game that Junpei’s been forced into, he can’t believe his eyes.

She looks the same as he remembers. Her eyes aren’t behind the glasses she’d worn at Dcom, but they’re the same icy blue as they were back then. Her eyes slip over him, into the crowd, and she stays quiet at first, letting her older partner speak. Her demeanor is calculating to the same degree as that girl in 2028, too suspicious and too cold, but she doesn’t seem to recognize him in the slightest.

The man next to her is older than she is, but there’s something familiar about him. And when he introduces himself as Sigma, Junpei thinks, _oh,_ this is where Sigma came from. This was the future that Sigma had tried to stop. It’s almost funny.

It’s one thing to get kidnapped 46 years after you closed a time loop, and another thing to get kidnapped and watch someone else close a loop, right in front of your eyes.

When Clover appears before him, the same as she was before, cradled in the masked man’s arms, Junpei steps forwards. He almost follows Alice in asking if she’s alright, too. It's been so long, but the sight of her pink hair reminds him of how she was when they actually knew each other. At the same time, Junpei realizes that it's not enough for her to be the same, if she doesn't know Junpei at all.

A bond formed by a Nonary Game isn’t one that’s easily forgotten, but time still freezes him in place.

The man who made him come here (Sigma?) told him that both he and Quark would be killed if he revealed what he knows about Akane and the previous games. It forces him to choke back the words stuck in his throat.

So Junpei curses himself and his inability to speak, to tell Clover the truth. Instead, he just feels the chilled air of the warehouse around him, watches how Alice’s hands move to brush back Clover’s hair, how soft their voices are. He watches the blood drain from Clover’s face as she realizes the situation, and he feels his feet still rooted in place.

His hand reaches out to Quark, but he doesn’t dare touch the boy. He can’t let anyone know what he knows. He can’t look Phi or Sigma in the eye and expect them to know a Junpei Tenmyouji from Dcom.

For Clover, it's the same; he introduces himself to her as Tenmyouji, and she doesn’t even question it. He looks into her green eyes and wonders with a sinking heart how much time has changed them.

* * *

The timeline splits, though Junpei doesn’t realize. Sometimes, it happens like this:

Junpei stares at a dead body. The woman is old, her hair completely grey, and her purple dress is splattered with blood. Her blood, more specifically. He sees, though, with a shock that hits him as if he’s been struck, that she has a ring on her right hand, the same one that Junpei had bought before Dcom, just in case she still cared, and realizes that his heart is pounding in his ears.

The others are saying things, but the words don’t reach Junpei. Quark’s eyes peer up at him with something close to concern, but someone grabs the boy and pulls him away from the bloody sight before he can say anything.

Junpei chokes on his own despair.

When Phi takes control of the group with her logical coldness, Junpei doesn’t protest. He just follows everyone else as they bring the body of Akane Kurashiki to the infirmary, resting her silently on a bed used for examining patients.

Junpei’s hands shake, so he shoves them in his pockets. His mouth curls down into a deep frown, so he clenches his teeth. His eyes can’t move away from her, so he doesn’t even try.

Things get worse from there. Junpei looks into Sigma’s eye and sees a man who thought his opponent would ally. Like hell Junpei would, when Akane is dead and everyone is suspicious. His heart sinks into anger, anger at not only Sigma, but the world. The game itself is the enemy, and Junpei’s not going to let it keep him trapped. Not again.

Sigma’s face falls. Junpei glares at him, certain that he has something to do with Zero.

But Sigma is persistent. He drags Junpei through door after door and asks him question after question. There’s nothing that Junpei can do but watch as Sigma and Clover work together, not recognizing him at all, while Quark succumbs to Radical-6.

Junpei is afraid. The idea that Quark could die, that he could die from _suicide,_ is like a vice around Junpei, never letting him go. He needs to know, more than anything, how to get Quark out of this hell. Quark is only a child, and Junpei was an idiot for letting him come to the moon in the first place.

He stays with the others, going through the door with Sigma and Clover without any resistance, but they don’t understand. They’ll never understand.

The recording of Diana’s voice comes back to him, in this time, in the form of a memory card found in the Pressure Exchange Chamber, and it chills him to the bone. It’s a message to him from Zero, he’s sure. He can hear each line as if it’s the very first day it was given to him.

“Six of us are dead,” Diana says. Junpei was supposed to be found dead, after that, but he wasn’t. _I thought I killed you,_ she told him, weeks later. _I really thought I killed you._ Her voice plays on loop in his head, and he feels as if he’s stuck again, his investigation crashing to the ground as all his leads disappear and Radical-6 sets in. He still doesn’t understand, and he feels it weighing on him, crushing him beneath all the things that Diana and the others kept hidden.

It takes him a moment to come back to himself, when the recording stops, but everyone’s questions wash away the memories somewhat. A bitterness takes root in his heart, though; he doesn't—can't—explain the recording.

Later, Sigma joins Junpei to the infirmary to get Quark. Junpei can feel himself tearing up when he sees the boy, finally cured, standing there both alive and awake. “Oh God… Quark…” Junpei can’t stop himself from saying as he slowly, cautiously pulls Quark into his arms, overwhelmed by the depth of his own relief. He’s shaking as he tightens his hold on Quark.

In that moment, Junpei holds his child in his arms and cries, and doesn’t even think about how Diana let Radical-6 be released.

All that matters in that moment is the boy in his arms, alive, not harmed by disease or by Zero. He doesn’t have time for holding his adopted grandson for long, not when the Chromatic Doors are going to open soon, but dammit, he can’t bring himself to care. Quark’s soft voice reaches his ears, colored with concern, and Junpei holds him even tighter. He’s so lucky to be alive, and he doesn’t even know it. Instead of caring for himself, he’s looking out for an old man like Junpei.

Junpei’s heart hurts. His tears fall onto Quark’s hat, and Quark doesn’t even question Junpei’s lies that his tears are nothing, breaking himself off before he can get the words out. It’s almost as if Quark understands the importance of this, even if he doesn’t feel it as heavily as Junpei does.

Junpei stops hugging Quark eventually, aware that they’re running out of time, but keeps hold of his shoulder. He doesn’t want to let Quark go ever again. It pains him too much, to recall the way Quark had grasped the scalpel in his small hands.

Rubbing his face to get rid of the remnants of tears, Junpei finally apologizes to Quark for bringing him into the Nonary Game. Quark looks puzzled at the question, and he’s also confused about Junpei’s questions about how he’s feeling, but when they leave for the white Chromatic Doors, he smiles at Junpei.

It’s almost feels like they’re not in the game anymore.

* * *

Before the third AB game, Junpei takes Quark back to the Director’s Office, unable to part from him but needing the picture of Akane that he left behind. The door opens for the two of them quickly, but Junpei still doesn’t leave as soon as they arrive.

His footsteps tap on the floor as he walks towards the photograph, but as he takes it in his hands, he takes a silent moment just to stare at it. To stare at her.

There’s a noise behind him, and Junpei jumps a bit at the shock, turning around to say something to Quark about not startling him because he’s old, but he stops short as he sees what actually happened.

A hologram of a man with grey hair and an artificial eye stands before them, powered by the strange glowing platform that they had ignored during their earlier search of this room, even as Sigma poked at it. The man wears a bracelet not unlike their own, his coat sleeve rolled up to show it.

Quark stares at the projection of Sigma in awe. “Grandpa, what's this…?” he asks, eyes wide.

This Sigma stands confidently, his mouth set into a neutral line.

“It's a hologram,” Junpei says, letting his anger seep into his voice as he glares at it. If this is Zero's office, and a projection of Sigma is here, then Junpei’s suspicions are confirmed. He knew that Sigma was involved, and that time travel was imminent, but proof that Sigma really was the person behind the kidnappings and murders hadn’t come up until now.

Zero Sr. had caused Akane’s death; Sigma had caused Akane’s death. Rage boils in Junpei’s chest, and he clenches his teeth hard. Even if the Sigma he met at the start of this game is different from the Sigma he met at Dcom, he still feels hatred boiling inside. The man is still at fault for everything that's happened.

Sigma begins to speak.

“So, you've finally made it,” the man says, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards like he’s not ready to cost them their lives if need be.

“Is he talking… to us?” Quark asks, inching closer to Junpei. Junpei puts his hand on Quark’s back. “Why’s Mr. Sigma in the hologram?” He looks up at Junpei curiously.

Junpei shakes his head. “I don’t think that's the same Sigma, Quark. Not that it really matters.”

“I am Zero. I was the one who brought you here.” Sigma’s mechanical eye looks so much more sinister than before, looking down at them with the cold essence of someone who understands more than they ever will.

“I knew it!” Junpei says, clenching his fist tightly enough to dig his nails into his palm, and he's ready to sock Sigma in the face as soon as he lays eyes on the real him.

“You undoubtedly have as many questions for me as there are stars in the sky. As you can see, however, this is only a recording.”

“Mr. Sigma is Zero Sr.?” Quark seems confused. “Why would he leave a recording for us? Mr. Sigma isn’t a bad person, is he?” Quark looks up at Junpei with concerned eyes, and Junpei sighs. Quark is scared that they'd become friendly with Zero Sr. Junpei isn’t sure himself, with his knowledge that Sigma can, at some point, time travel.

Junpei shakes his head. “I don’t know, kid.”

And he doesn’t; Sigma is as much a mystery as he was when Junpei first met him. He doesn’t understand anything except that he needs to get out of here.

More than anything else, he has to save Quark. Akane… isn’t coming back, but Quark is alive and breathing like he always should, and Junpei can’t let Sigma, no matter his intentions, take him away.

Junpei is old and tired. He just wants to wake up from this nightmare of a game.

But try as he might, it's not a dream. The Nonary Game is achingly real, and Sigma is behind it all. Junpei clutches Akane’s photo tighter in his hands. Sigma continues speaking, launching into a tangent about termites.

Quark stands, staring up at the hologram as if trying to solve a puzzle. He looks confused, and hurt, and angry, when Junpei looks at his face to see what he's feeling. He doesn’t leave, though, so Junpei doesn’t either.

“If we are like the termites,” Sigma continues, “then what we've created is almost certainly something of tremendous beauty.” His deep voice takes on an almost awed tone.

There's a silence in the room, and Junpei glances again at Quark.

“And you,” Sigma says, gesturing towards them as if he can actually see them there, “are about to catch a glimpse of it. Or have you already...?”

“...I think…” Quark bites his bottom lip in thought. “Grandpa, I don’t think Mr. Sigma’s a bad person. He’s… not the same as the Zero we’re seeing, right?” He looks up at Junpei with hope in his eyes.

Junpei softens. If Quark really wants to believe, then Junpei can try and believe in the Sigma he met at Dcom. He'd do that much for the boy he loves so much. “Right. Doesn’t mean he didn’t have a hand in all this,” Junpei rubs the back of his head, “but he's definitely different, from the way he talks to, well, everything.”

Quark smiles, and Junpei thinks of summer days in June.

Sigma’s voice drifts between any hope blossoming inside them, though. Junpei turns back to the hologram just as he speaks again, and freezes at his words.

“Now, let's move on to the second topic. It is somewhat more immediately meaningful to your life, and, in fact, the lives of several billion other people.”

It’s the word _billion_ that catches Junpei’s attention. Just a few hours ago, he heard that word fall from Diana’s mouth like a stone all over again, like a weight that she had to carry alone. But as Junpei stares at the man projected before him, it strikes him that it’s been following them, all of them, for so long that it would make more sense to say that it’s always been their destiny.

A terrible destiny, but one that’s shaped their collective history nonetheless.

“I realize this is rather sudden, but I have a password for you,” Sigma’s voice is still steady, but he gains a note of urgency that he hadn’t had before. “It is the password to disarm the bomb numbered ‘one.’”

Despite any hint of emotion, Sigma’s voice is still disturbingly calm. It breaks Junpei’s resolve. Everything that he built up towards the current Sigma flows down the drain.

Junpei’s brain fills with static. There’s nothing in the universe that could make him feel more distraught than the possible death of Quark, and here it is, staring him in the face. His eyes search Sigma’s for some semblance of a lie; he finds nothing.

“That’s not…” Junpei blinks, glaring incredulously. “That’s not possible! What bomb?!”

The recording doesn’t respond, just continues with talking about this password. It's not anything either of them can remember. Quark looks at Junpei with shock, just like he has so many times since they got kidnapped. “Grandpa,” Quark says, “what are we going to do? We didn’t know about a bomb before, so…!”

Junpei turns and lays his hands on Quarks shoulders, trying desperately to warn him. “There’s nothing we can do but escape before it becomes a possibility.” He looks away. “Goddamn… Zero—no, Sigma, he’s putting all of us in danger, and I won’t let you stay here any longer!”

Sigma continues speaking, and Junpei grits his teeth. “Before I go, however, I have a warning. You cannot tell any of your companions what you heard or saw here. If you do, you will be penalized. Immediately.” His voice takes on a grim note, looking almost suspicious of them before his tone lightens again. “I hope we will meet again someday. We would have much to discuss.”

Junpei feels his heart drop to his stomach. What faces them, if they try and warn anyone, is death.

He shivers. Quark looks up at him.

“Then…” Quark lowers his head slightly, just enough to hide his face from Junpei. “We can’t explain it to Mr. Sigma? If he’s not the same person, then what if he doesn’t know…?” Quark shakes his head slightly, and Junpei looks down at him sadly.

“Then he wouldn’t ever find out. Maybe that's a good thing.” Junpei squeezes Quark’s arms slightly tighter, hoping to be comforting. “I’m sorry, kid, but we can’t risk it. We can’t risk staying here, either, especially not when we don’t know if Sigma is actually Zero or not. If he’s putting on an act, then he could put you in danger.”

“I know, Grandpa. But,” he looks up again. “If we have to leave, then he should at least know that you’re not a bad person. ‘Cause I feel like Mr. Sigma should know that. I promise I won't tell him about this, though...”

Junpei lets go of Quark and realizes, offhandedly, that the photograph he’s still holding is somewhat wrinkled in a place it wasn’t before. The fact seems so unimportant compared to the boy in front of him, who still wants to believe.

Junpei furrows his eyebrows, but still puts his free hand gently on Quark’s head in a comforting manner. “Fine. I wouldn’t trust Sigma as far as I can throw him, but I trust you.” He sighs. “I know that you understand how important this is.”

He has to betray Sigma. He can’t let Sigma escape with them. For Quark’s sake.

“I’ll make sure he understands that you’re not a bad person,” Quark says resolutely. “Because you’re not! You care a lot, and that’s why you’re doing this, right?”

Junpei smiles and lets out a laugh. It’s strange, how someone like him, who has blood on his hands from his time as a detective, who’s been searching for someone who once kidnapped him, who’s fought selfishly to survive even after Radical-6 desecrated the planet, can have someone care for him so wholeheartedly. Quark is the only thing that brings Junpei happiness in the world he’s found himself in, and he’ll protect him no matter where it takes him.

“Yeah,” Junpei says, fighting the way his smile wants to turn watery. “Yeah, I care about you more than anything else.”

Quark’s face softens from its determined hardness. The hologram has long since fizzled out, but Junpei keeps an eye on it as Quark writes a letter to Sigma. Junpei looks down at Akane’s picture, and thinks, for just a second, that she’s set him free.

* * *

In a different timeline, it goes like this:

They don't find Akane’s dead body, and Junpei thinks nothing of it. He still thinks about her in a more general way, though, between going through Chromatic Doors. In this timeline, he doesn’t go with Sigma through the first door, and instead he investigates the lounge with Clover and K.

He avoids Clover’s eyes. She acts like a ditz, cracking jokes and offering him alcohol. It’s something he’s quite tempted by, to forget everything that’s happening, but… K gives him a cautionary look, and Junpei turns away. Maybe later. Maybe someday.

(When Clover betrays him, he can’t stop himself from mentioning, resigned to the situation, that he would never betray her. She gives him a strange look, almost calculating.)

Akane was supposed to be here, but Junpei finds himself without even a hint that she was ever supposed to be on the moon, if that’ even where they are. The gravity feels the same as Earth, which almost makes him think that the person who kidnapped him was lying. He can’t shake his suspicion, though.

Junpei regards Sigma with wariness, even though he has more things to worry about. The man jokes with everyone, no matter the situation. Even after he diffuses bombs, he’s still prancing around flirting with girls who are much, much younger than him.

Junpei’s also distrustful with Phi for the same reasons, as she easily explains the different options they have for each door. She rolls her eyes at Sigma, sometimes snapping at him, but she still seems perfectly willing to work with him, somehow. She’s cold, but still tries to help everyone, no matter who she has to work with. Despite having enough points to leave, she doesn’t.

(Junpei doesn’t remember Dcom very well, since it’s been so long, but he can still recall Sigma and Phi, whispering to each other.

He remembers glancing at them and seeing Akane next to them, giggling behind her hand, like they were telling a joke and she just happened to hear. Occasionally, he remembers Akane jumping into the conversation with an ease that she didn’t have when talking to Junpei, whenever he’d tried to start one. His heart hurt, seeing her like that.

If she really was close with them back then, though, why didn’t she turn up now? What had happened at Dcom, to cause all this?)

Junpei hadn’t cared about the specifics, at the time, but now it feels important. If they really are trying to create a time loop, then it matters. Besides that, Sigma keeps choosing to go through doors with Phi, and she seems perfectly okay with that. It’s different from the closeness and jokes that Junpei remembers Phi poking at Sigma, but it’s familiar all the same.

Maybe, it was the plan all along, to create trust between them via this Nonary Game. It makes Junpei sick, to think about their lives being toyed with in that way, but he can’t deny that it makes sense.

* * *

Junpei scoffs as the door closes behind him, Phi, and Sigma. On the door, unseen by them now, was a simple nameplate telling them what room they stepped into: Q.

“Really?” He says, practically rolling his eyes. “Now someone’s just being a smartass.”

If this room leads to the exit, but can only be opened by 5 of the original 9 participants, Junpei is going to find Zero Sr. and punch him for his sense of humor. He has to stop himself from looking around for anything that might indicate that it could be an incinerator, too; not that it could be, since the room ends up being surrounded by completely blank white walls.

The three of them start searching quickly, without much fanfare. They’re all pretty good at it, Junpei thinks, and even though Sigma takes the lead with some of the puzzles, there are others where Junpei or Phi take over.

Sigma grins when he gets answers correct, his wrinkles becoming more prominent on his face. Junpei wonders if his face would also seem old to the two of them, if they remembered him.

Junpei shakes off the thoughts as they finish. It’s just another puzzle in this damn game, and all he has to do is leave as soon as possible, especially after the safe reveals Axelavir, the only thing that Junpei could ever want, even if he’s just unconscious for the time being. Quark’s safety is worth more than any further investigation, and as soon as the door unlocks, Junpei steps towards it, ready to rush out and meet again with the others. Eventually, they should be able to all leave together.

Even Sigma and Phi, who certainly have something to do with Zero Sr., even if they’re only being used by him, will be able to escape.

He supposes it’s only fair, in an ironic kind of way. The only reason they’re not trapped here forever is because Phi, despite her 9 BP, isn’t leaving them to rot in order to save herself. Junpei glances at her.

“Huh, it opened,” Phi says, casually.

Junpei sucks a breath through his teeth. He wants to get moving, damnit. “We should get back to the floor A warehouse, then.” He hears Phi’s boots clicking on the floor as she moves to follow him, but Junpei turns back a bit as Sigma speaks without not having moved an inch.

“Hey, wait…” Sigma is looking around the room with a strange expression. “Did you guys hear something?”

“What…?” Phi asks noncommittally.

Sigma finally focuses on the one machine that they didn’t really end up using in the puzzle. “You didn’t hear it? It came from over there…” He looks at the strange flat disk on the ground, then to the screen. “It sounds like something turning on…” He turns back to the two of them, pointing at the screen, which is now lit up with a proud grin. “See? I told you. This screen wasn’t on before.”

“You’re right...” Junpei says. “Guess it was set to turn on when we opened the door.”

Phi puts her fingers and thumb on her chin. “It looks like an authentication screen. I think we need to put in an ID and a password.”

“Yeah, but _what_?” Junpei asks.

Sigma looks thoughtful as well, peering closer to the screen and blocking Junpei’s view of it. Junpei can see the way his shoulders tense, and watches as his arms move to type something in, but the actual contents of what he’s doing are unknown to him.

He almost opens his mouth to ask about it, when Phi exclaims, “Sigma! Look!” and Junpei looks to where she’s pointing to see a figure showing above the disk they’d noticed earlier.

Junpei’s heart practically stops at the sight.

Akane Kurashiki stands before him, looking as real as anyone. Her face is old, but she stands straight, hands folded over one another. It’s the ring that really convinces him that she’s really Akane, something that he remembers nervously, stupidly buying. Something that went missing at Dcom.

His shock almost makes him angry. Angry at her or angry at himself, though, he has no idea.

“Y-You're—” Sigma starts, his real eye wide and staring.

Junpei stares at her sadly, anger draining away as quickly as it came. “Akane…” he says, looking into her eyes for the first time in 45 years. Finally, he found her again. Finally.

He steps closer, slowly, almost afraid that she'll disappear if he gets to close. That she'll leave him again, even after all this time. Still, his feet bring him near to her, like he's walking through a dream. He reaches out his hand to touch her, but…

His hand passes through her body. She has no physical form, and he feels his heart constrict. She's… not here. Zero had promised that she'd be here.

“She's a hologram…” Phi says, slowly, thoughtfully.

Junpei closes his eyes to hold back his emotions. Why… why had Zero lied? “Akane…” he says, softly, as if he’s talking to someone who can hear him. He balls his hand into a loose fist, and it falls back to his side, through her hologram. She's standing before him with a serene smile, but if she's not actually there, then what does it matter?

It's then that she begins to speak, and Junpei bows his head and listens, still caught up in what could've happened if she was actually there. He feels tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and wipes them away while Sigma and Phi are focused on Akane’s speech.

“I see you've finally arrived. I've been waiting for you.” she pauses, looking around as if she can actually see them there. “Well, I suppose that's slightly inaccurate. What you see now is a holographic message I recorded before you came here.” She continues on like that, telling them that they can’t ask questions, even if they want to.

It's funny, almost, how Junpei isn't surprised that she'd worked with, or even might _be_ Zero Sr., and it doesn't even stop him from missing her with the same aching weight as he always had.

“We created the AB Project for one purpose… To transport the consciousnesses of two people into the past. Those people are you, Sigma, and you, Phi.” Akane smiles. Junpei stares at her.

“What do you mean, ‘the past’?” Sigma asks incredulously.

It connects in Junpei’s head easily, because for him, he’s lived through both Sigma and Phi being different people. It should’ve been obvious from the start what happened. This Nonary Game is supposed to send Sigma and Phi all the way back to Dcom, where things will change, with any luck. They're trying to find the timeline where Diana doesn't release Radical-6.

Akane continues, talking calmly about the way people’s minds might be like a quantum computer, or like the roots of a tree. She explains the idea that there might be a way that human minds are connected, through a separate dimension that humans can't see. It feels like Junpei has been sent back to when he was 21 and naive, running around a ship in order to seek a way out.

“Things that might appear to be separate from one another in three dimensions could be connected to one another if you look at them in four dimensions. Doesn’t that at least seem like it could be a possibility?” Junpei stares at her as she goes silent for a moment, letting them take it in. “I believe that is how human consciousness actually works. Well, I’m not the only one, I suppose. Zero and I share that belief.”

She’s not Zero, this time. It doesn’t change anything.

“Morphogenetic field theory,” Junpei mutters to himself, working out all the twists in what Akane is saying. She’s explaining it in a different way from how Junpei learned it, but it’s the same thing. He doesn’t understand how to use it to go back in time, but that doesn’t matter for him. That use of the field only matters for Sigma and Phi.

Sigma gives Junpei a strange look, but Akane starts speaking again. They listen in silence as she explains what she means by the fourth dimension.

“It probably sounds silly to you,” she continues. “A ridiculous story made up by a mad old woman. But look at what’s happened to you. You’ve seen many different worlds and timelines, haven’t you Sigma? And what about you, Phi? I know you have too… Am I wrong?”

Junpei looks at the others. Have they really already seen whole other timelines? He can’t even imagine it, even though he’d also accessed the field, all the way back in 2027.

Phi is staring thoughtfully at the floor, not meeting any of their eyes. Sigma is similarly preoccupied, gazing at Akane as if she holds all the answers. In a way, she probably does, given her experience with the morphogenetic field. Neither he nor Phi look shocked, though; they’ve obviously actually experienced it, and now all they have to do is to begin to understand.

“Tenmyouji,” Junpei jumps slightly as Akane says his name, even if it’s not the one he’s used to hearing her call him, “should know what I’m talking about as well.” She looks forlorn, now, when Junpei looks back at her, desperate once again to take in all her expressions and words. She looks up and it’s almost as if she’s meeting his eyes with her own. It’s like she’s the same person he always knew, despite how many years have passed. “I believe you experienced something very similar nearly half a century ago. You sent your consciousness to the past to help save a little girl’s life.”

Junpei feels as if his legs might give out, but he stands his ground, only able to stand and watch her explain his past to him. She smiles, slightly, as if she’s not talking about herself, but Junpei desperately holds onto the truth.

“It was a long time ago, but…” Akane trails off for a moment. Her eyes are so, so purple, the same as they always were. “Perhaps you still remember?”

Junpei looks away, just for a moment, before looking back. Even if it’s not real, if she’s not actually here, he has to savor this moment as much as he possibly can, because who knows how long it’ll last. Maybe this one moment will be able to last him the rest of his life.

“Yeah,” he says, just above a whisper, “of course I do. How could I forget? That little girl was you, Akane…”

He’s never been able to forget her, not really. She’s always been there, even after they left each other as kids. He’s been searching for that girl for so long, that he doesn’t think he’d ever have been able to abandon it, even after Radical-6 set in. And now… here she is. Even though he lost his memories of Dcom, he never stopped searching; Dcom is barely a thought in his mind now, because he’s finally, finally able to speak with her again.

“Now…” Akane says, after a long moment. “Unfortunately, my time is up. The final stage of the project will begin very soon. I need to go prepare. The next time we meet, I can tell you the rest of the story. So come and find me. I’ll be waiting.”

Junpei’s heart drops.

“One last thing...” she continues. She’s not looking at Junpei anymore. “The cat in the box… Is it alive? Or is it dead? Sigma, Phi… You will decide it’s fate. Goodbye…” As she says the last word, Junpei can see her become less and less solid.

She may have said they’ll meet again, but how can Junpei be sure? How can he believe her? Junpei reaches out for her before he can think. “Wait!” he cries. “Akane, wait!”

She’s going to leave him again. How many times has she left him? (Four, now. One, when they were kids, two, after he saved her life, three, at the end of Dcom.) How can he make her stay? (He doesn’t know. How could he?)

Akane starts to laugh. It’s not unkind, the way she meets his wide, frightened eyes, but Junpei is still unbearably cold. “Oh, Tenmyouji,” she says. “I can almost see you… You don’t need to worry. Everything is going to be okay. I _will_ see you again one day. I promise.” Junpei’s eyes brim with tears. Her promise lodges itself in his heart. “But I’m going to have to ask you to wait just a little longer.”

No. No, she can’t go! Damnit, it’s been 45 years!

“Wait…” Junpei says, weakly. She’s fading more. It fills his mind, like a warning, that he can’t do this, not again. “_Akane_!” he yells, futilely.

She fades entirely, the hologram shutting off with a beep that sounds muted in Junpei’s ears, and he collapses to his knees. He can feel his hands shaking, so he squeezes them into fists, his nails pressing tightly against his palms, and his tears are wet and cold as they run down his face. All he wanted when he came to the moon was to see her again, but not like this! Not in some message not even meant for him!

Sigma and Phi may be the reason this is happening, but Junpei needs her too. She’s obviously changed from how she was before, but it doesn’t even matter to him. He just… wants to talk to her. Just one more time.

He pulls his photo of Akane out of his pocket. He stares at it, his tears dropping off his face onto his thighs, and it's all he can do to angle the paper away so that they don’t fall onto the fragile paper. That summer day in June, captured forever in the picture held in his hands, she had smiled at him. And now… Now they’d both gone through too many Nonary Games to be that innocent.

Phi was the next one to speak, when Junpei finally looks up from his hunched position on the floor and wipes away his tears with the back of his hand. “Hey…” she says, softly.

“What?” he snaps, though it’s without true malice behind it. His breathing is shaky, still caught up in everything.

She sighs. “Listen, I’m not going to ask if you don’t want me to. But let’s go heal Quark and Alice, okay?”

“Right,” Sigma says, putting a hand on Phi’s shoulder and smiling awkwardly. “We have the Axelavir, so we can definitely help Quark. Or… we could go give it to him without you, if you’d rather stay behind…?”

Junpei scoffs as he gets up from his knees. “No need. I’m fine now.” He looks back down at the picture, and smiles, pushing away the last remnants of tears before tucking it back into his pocket. “Let’s help Quark, and then we can find Akane.” He looks both of their faces. “Good luck, you two.”

Giving Quark the Axelavir is more important than waiting for Akane, and when the boy’s eyes flutter open and he’s once again happy, the world feels like it’s been righted. The only thing Junpei needs for the world to be even better is for Akane to be found.

Then, Junpei thinks, he might finally understand the girl who left him for a project like this. Maybe, he’ll learn not of the one who left him at Dcom, but of the woman who brought him to the moon, despite everything.

* * *

Akane looks old. It shouldn’t come as a surprise after he saw her hologram, but he can’t stop looking at her. She pats the cushion next to her on the lounge sofa when he goes to see her after the game ends. Everything has slowed down as they all plan to go their separate ways, and Junpei settles uneasily beside her.

The space between them can’t be more than a foot, but it feels like it would take hours for his voice to reach her, if he even spoke at all. He’s sat quietly through the whole game, through his arrival here, seeing Sigma and Phi, and through Akane’s appearances and explanations to the former two, and he never truly said anything to her or about her. The closest he’d gotten was with her hologram, when she couldn’t hear him.

His hands squeeze into fists.

“I’m sure you have things you want to say to me, Junpei,” she says, and her voice is warm. It holds tones that she hadn’t shown to the others. Junpei meets her eyes and tries to form words. His heart feels heavy.

“Your ring,” he says, first. It’s a stupid thing to start with, but it’s all he can think of.

“Did you notice that it went missing, when you left Dcom?” Akane smiles, and looks away, shifting her hand in the lounge’s light so that the gaudy thing sparkles. More wrinkles appear on her face when her eyes crinkle, gazing at it. “I can explain everything, if you want. In some timelines, you don’t want me to. Is this one of those?”

Junpei laughs weakly. He had noticed the ring missing, but it had seemed small in light of the mysteries stretching before him, in that moment. His voice sounds old, just like her’s does. “Please tell me. I don’t get it. I don’t get you, anymore.”

“Hm.” There’s something pensive in the way she looks at the ring, now. “I think I understand you as well as ever, despite everything.” She looks up at him. There’s a small silence, and she looks deeply into Junpei’s eyes.

Junpei can’t understand her at all. His thoughts twist and turn, but in the end, the only thing he can think is, _is that why you brought me here?_ It still stings, the way she left him. Does she really know him that well, when they’ve been separated for decades? He looks at her purple eyes and recalls blurrily the cold way they looked when she left him for the third time.

“What happened at Dcom?” he asks, instead of saying anything substantial. Akane doesn’t react to the way his emotions change, but he supposes that he hasn’t asked her to. In some ways, his feelings haven’t shifted at all.

“We were kidnapped,” Akane says, “by someone calling himself Zero II. All of us… We tried to get out via a method of jumping timelines, but you and I found ourselves in this one instead of a better one. The versions of us who were originally in this timeline died, and we replaced them. Before we came, we had been tricked into coming to this timeline by Zero II. We were told to go to the timeline where we were dead, but… In reality, we were never able to find the bodies.” Her voice is even, just listing out facts she has memorized. “We suspect Zero hid or disposed of the bodies.”

“We?”

“Crash Keys,” Akane clarifies. “My organization. Sigma and Phi are a part of it, of course, and Diana must’ve been aware of it too, since she was so close with them.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Junpei rubs the back of his head. “Some other Junpei and Akane died, and we entered the timeline. So that’s why Diana thought that we were dead.” It feels unreal. “I guess she really didn’t know, then.”

Akane looks into his eyes. “Correct. Crash Keys of course had some influence in the aftereffects of the incident. We dealt with Diana’s trial and with getting her into contact with Sigma before we took him and Phi back to our headquarters, for example.”

“That was you?” Junpei lets out an unbelieving breath. “You really were behind everything, then. So I was afraid of being kidnapped for nothing.”

Akane laughs softly. “Oh, Junpei,” she says. Junpei stares at the way her wrinkles look when she smiles. “It’s just like you to look for the mystery. I hope you weren’t too scared, though.”

Junpei’s words get stuck in his throat. “Why…” he says, quietly, and he glares down at his clenched fists. “Why did Diana get to know everything?” _Why not me,_ he doesn’t ask.

“She was needed to go to the moon, so that Sigma could base Luna off of her.”

Junpei barks out a laugh. “And what about the ring, then? Did I even get the chance to give it to you?” Diana, if he remembers correctly, had said that Junpei wasn’t allowed to know anything. Akane looks at him with sad eyes, and Junpei thinks that she must understand worlds and timelines that he’ll never get to.

“Of course you did,” she says, and reaches for his hand. He pulls away slightly, and she frowns. “I wanted to be with you,” her voice is quiet, “but…”

Junpei looks away. “The apocalypse comes first, huh?”

“You had to forget about Dcom,” she says, pulling her hand to her chest. “You had to realize that chasing me wasn’t the right thing to do, or else you’d find yourself still looking for me even in the middle of a pandemic. You would’ve died, and I couldn’t—”

She cuts herself off and takes a breath. The silence stretches between them.

Sadness fills Junpei’s chest, and for a second he thinks that he can’t breathe. He never would’ve cared. He kept looking for her anyways, but without any memories or any leads, it was impossible. His whole life, all the time he spent searching… it led to this. To the reveal that it was her who made him forget. To them sitting so close they could touch, but still not close enough.

Their tired old eyes connect and look away from each other again. Junpei missed her like a thorn in his heart, but he can’t forget how methodical she was. He would never be able to lose the few things he remembered from Dcom, like her sorrowful gaze as he fell, and he would never be able to forget the cold way she explained the purpose of the AB Project.

“Akane…” he says. “I saved you once. Do you really think I wouldn’t come for you again?”

“You've saved me a lot of times, but this isn’t the time for that,” Akane sighs, folding her hands atop one another. “This timeline never has been. I had to leave you for this project. It was the only way.”

He wishes it hadn’t been. He furrows his eyebrows, lifting his eyes to stare at the lights until they imprint themselves on his vision. The two of them are no longer the echoes of their childhood selves that they once were, a long, long time ago. Junpei has a life and a child now, and Akane had her project. That would have to be good enough for both of them.

“I’m leaving with Quark,” Junpei says, finally. “You should say something to him. I’ve told him about you, and I’d like him to at least know a little more of you than,” he gestures around them vaguely, “this.”

“Of course.”

Junpei sighs, standing up. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought we could go back to how it was, but that was obviously naive. So… we’ll have to say goodbye.”

“I’ll never forget you... Tenmyouji,” Akane says after a moment, and it feels breathtakingly final. Her purple eyes shine slightly in the light, and Junpei feels a stab in his heart at the way she says his last name, just as she had in the hologram. It’s as if they don’t actually know each other, and it hurts. In a way, though, it’s the truth.

Maybe, this whole time, it’s been the only truth.

“I’ll never forget you either, Kanny.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
